As a parent, I want to work from home. What do I do?
Magical advice from a crusty old remote work parent.
So you want to work from home and raise very small humans at the same time. Well, congratulations!
Are you insane???
That will be the first question popping into many people’s heads. Ignore them. I raised two small humans while working from home. Although there were times while pulling all-nighters tending to their adorable needs or cleaning up some unspeakable toxic glop extruded from one end or another that I seriously doubted that I was raising humans, I never doubted that working from home while raising them was the right decision.
The good news for you is: I survived (and so did the children). The question you have is…
HOW?
Smaller package = bigger trouble
You may be under the impression that babies sleep all the time and must constantly look adorable or else parents would thrust them into the arms of the first person foolish enough to ring the doorbell.
If your child slept wonderfully through the first two years of life and did nothing worse than softly mew like a kitten when they were hungry, I hate you.
Both of mine were alien monster devils pre-programmed to drive me to an early grave. Let’s assume that your bundle of joy will fall somewhere into the middle of this spectrum. It still won’t be easy for you but don’t despair. Here are my “Top 4 Tips for Remotely Toiling Pre-toddler Parents.”
- Get help early — It never occurred to me to hire a part-time babysitter until my daughter was almost a year old and I blame the oversight on sleep deprivation. When I did hire a sitter, I had her come every workday in the 4 hour window that my daughter was most likely not to be napping. Between the sitter and the afternoon nap, I was able to focus on work just enough to stay productive. But be warned, I did have to reread and fix every email I wrote six times before sending because the smell of diapers obviously affected the part of my brain that formed coherent sentences.
- Be mobile — Become a remote work ninja and figure out how to do your most critical work on a phone, tablet, notebook-sized laptop, etc. Become mobile inside your house so you can sit in a circle of baby toys or feed your little one while still responding to email, reading documents, brokering power deals, etc. Become mobile outside the house so you can take the little one to a park or other infectious-disease plague pits where parents with small children gather to exchange dangerous microbes. Parks and playgrounds are especially good for several reasons. First, thanks to the calming effect that the great outdoors has on babies, you will be tricked into thinking that everything will be okay. Second, being out in the open, increases the opportunity that giant, circling eagle will swoop down from the sky and carry away your troubles. And lastly, participating in conference calls while sitting under a tree is a great way to make the others on the call wish they could work remotely as well. By keeping up the facade of living the perfect life, you will become the envy of all and trick many more adults into procreating. Fools.
- Schedule creatively — Even if you don’t have a babysitter or spouse to assist in this reproductive nightmare that you brought on yourself, after a while, most babies fall into a pattern of wake-sleep-tantrum-repeat. If your work situation allows for it, schedule the parts of your job that require the most concentration during the times when the little one will likely be napping and the lighter weight parts of your job at the other times. Naturally, when they are finally napping quietly, you will be struck by the irresistible urge to curl up into an exhausted, sobbing ball on the couch. You must be strong and power through. The war will be won one battle at a time so plan on heavy caffeine consumption and some sort of antidepressant.
- Be honest when you can — It sounds odd but not every remote work warrior advertises that they are working at home, especially when there are complications (another synonym for children). I have worked with clients for years who one day exclaim that they never knew that I worked from home likely because they heard a blood-curdling scream in the background. If you can be honest about your challenges in a way that will allow you to jump off a call when necessary or reschedule based on a delayed nap then it can remote a poo-ton of stress from your weary shoulders. However, (IMPORTANT CAVEAT COMING…) I usually advise a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach to work from home challenges so apply this carefully. Some clients and employers don’t have high level of patience for missing deadlines or cancelling conference calls no matter how good the reason is.
Even if you can follow all four suggestions, I am the first to admit that these are not panaceas. Once your baby becomes mobile enough to seek you out, your babysitter’s job becomes infinitely more difficult. Your little one will inevitably slip away from their captors, find the locked door you are cowering behind and turn into Thor The Pissed-off Baby Thundergod. The horrific sounds, volcanic volume and super-human hammer blows that will be visited upon the vertical (hopefully locked) obstacle will amaze you. Suddenly the important conference call you are trying to manage where a six figure deal hangs in the balance will become an exercise in strategic muting conducted from the back of a closet with a blanket over your head.
Mobile Warriors under Two Feet Tall
Assuming you survive the pre-T stage and haven’t returned to the office world just to get some rest, your work from home parenting life will get easier. Toddlers and preschoolers are far more entertainable for longer periods, but you must still resist locking them in sound-proofed boxes.
I still highly recommend finding someone to assist you for a few hours every day so that you can reliably schedule your most critical work. If this can happen outside your home or you can escape to a cafe or the library leaving a trustworthy human at home to suffer in your place, life will seem even less like hell on earth.
For the rest of the time, you will find that you can answer emails, participate in conference calls and even think coherently for five minutes while in the presence of your offspring. Snacks, toys and strategically inserted Thomas the Tank Engine videos can be woven into a schedule that would even impress NASA project managers.
Making it happen
As I mentioned above, if you already have a remote job then talking about your personal trials and tribulations of child-rearing is totally fine as long as you are still being productive and you have an understanding boss. If you are interviewing for a remote position, however, honesty about your parental plans is not the best policy.
The company you are interviewing with may promote themselves as family-friendly, but if you think having a baby or children at home while working is going to be such a challenge you feel compelled to come clean about it during a remote interview, then you are telling the interviewer she should be concerned too. — How to easily land a remote job: bite your tongue
In other words, if you are confident that you can balance working from home with keeping your kids safe and entertained, then it is your business. If you bring it up to your future employer it’s now their business too and you are asking them to guess if you can handle it. Why complicate things?
So while you are looking for that remote job, or any job, learn about how can avoid the online job application trap.
If you are going to go the work from home route while raising small children, I wish you good luck. Be stoic. Remember, you could have nearly the same stress and not be paid at all.
